Next week we are hosting our first guest in a new Dean's Speaker Series at Boyd. Our inaugural speaker is Professor Randy Barnett, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center. Professor Barnett is one of the nation's leading scholars on constitutional law and constitutional history, and his legal arguments have helped shape recent arguments in the Supreme Court over the meaning of the commerce clause of the Constitution. His talk is entitled "Popular Sovereignty and Judicial Review."

Please join us on Thursday, October 10 at 4:00 p.m. in the Thomas and Mack Moot Court Facility at the law school, with a reception to follow. This event is free and open to all.

Marketa Trimble personifies the second generation of excellence at the Boyd School of Law. She joined the faculty in 2010, and is already a leading authority on matters of international intellectual property law. Her expertise, creativity, and insight in this field are informed by rigorous academic study: she has two doctoral degrees and two law degrees; one of each from Prague, and one of each from Stanford. She is multilingual, multi-disciplinary, and multi-talented.

Professor Trimble’s expertise ranges broadly from critiques and analyses of cutting-edge issues at the intersection of intellectual property and private international law, on one hand, to deep descriptions of history, on the other. Among Professor Trimble’s nine publications since 2012 is The Patent System in Pre-1989 Czechoslovakia, a chapter from a book about intellectual property in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

This book chapter analyzes patent law in Czechoslovakia for the period from 1945 through the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Her account dispels misperceptions that there was no patent system in Czechoslovakia prior to 1989, and contributes to the recent trend in the historiography of the Soviet bloc countries by showing that patent law development was not uniform across the Soviet bloc. Trimble offers a fascinating account of how patenting and even innovation more generally was subject to centralized planning, as opposed to being the product of market forces. She also locates her historical account within the context of important contemporary debates in the international intellectual property community.

In any given week, Professor Trimble is likely to be lending her expertise in a speech to an international community somewhere in Europe, then meeting with leaders from other colleges on the UNLV campus to create initiatives and jobs that benefit students. As local as she is global, and as practical as she is theoretical, Trimble is a law professor for the 21st century.

For the two years leading up to his matriculation at Boyd this August, Scott Morris fought the good fight, working with struggling but promising students in the Phoenix Union High School District. As a Teach for America educator, Scott experienced the satisfaction and frustration of attempting to better the lives and prospects of students with limited means and family support. Returning home to Las Vegas for law school does not mark the end of Scott’s fight for the future of students like those he encountered at Camelback High School. Indeed, it is just getting started.

Scott confesses that his appreciation for the value of education in enhancing the quality of one’s life came to him later rather than sooner. Throughout his high school years, he was an average student who elevated sports and social life over academic achievement. But a sociology class he took at community college turned his priorities around, instilling what Scott calls "a deeper understanding of education and its implications for African American leaders such as Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, and Thurgood Marshall -- I became enlightened about the importance of educational equity, and I discovered that education was the key that uplifted these leaders to fight against injustice and mediocrity." This enlightenment was pivotal to Scott in transforming him from academically average to graduating Morehouse College with Phi Beta Kappa honors.

As a Boyd Public Interest Fellow, Scott joins a cadre of students who share his demonstrated dedication to improving the circumstances of those in our society who face difficult challenges, socioeconomic and otherwise. "I am committed to using my knowledge of education and legal training to address the needs of our community," he says. His fight continues, and Scott becomes better armed for it with each day and week at Boyd.

Nearly nine years ago, Sean Claggett opened the doors to what is now Claggett & Sykes Law Firm in Las Vegas. The firm has grown from just two employees in 2005 to 12 employees today, including three Boyd attorneys (Sean Claggett '03, William Sykes '05, and Matthew Granda '12). Claggett & Sykes has developed a reputation in the legal community for being one of the top personal injury and product defect law firms in the state of Nevada.

Sean has used his success as a lawyer to give back to the community in a number of ways, such as donating hundreds of bikes over the years to needy children during the holidays. He and his wife of 13 years, Louella Claggett, have also given back by donating money to charitable organizations such as Three Square, March of Dimes, and Challenged Athletes Foundation, just to name a few. Sean’s passion for philanthropy has resulted in his riding his bicycle from San Francisco to San Diego, in which he and 100 other riders raised more than $1.3 million for the Challenged Athletes Foundation. Sean’s next adventure awaits him in South Africa where he will be riding his bicycle 700 miles over nine days to help raise money for the Challenged Athletes Foundation.